Maids Abuse in Qatar

The phenomenon of maids took over Qatar and the Gulf countries in the past 20 years. Since the majority of the Qatari citizens are from the middle upper social class or the higher upper social class, they all tend to have one maid or more in their property. These maids are assigned to different duties, starting from cleaning and cooking to driving children to schools and friend's house.

Indonesia, India and The Philippines are the country who usually train their maids and send them to the gulf to work. Yet human rights are violated in all Gulf countries, but it does not include the whole population. For example, Al Jazeera English report established that Indonesians maids receive training before heading out to work in someone's house, but lately, they received a lot reports about violations of human rights. Some maids got tortured by the people that they work for. These forms of torture start with hitting and end in burning skin or popping out an eye.

According to these maids, they were tortured because could not do a certain duty because their physical body could not handle it, or because they wanted to get paid for the past couple of months. Three Journalism students, Abir Bouguerra, Angel Polacco and Sara Al-Darwish did a report about maid abuse in Qatar. The story concluded that maids from different nationalities get abused physically, verbally and physiologically. All these abuse forms are added to their low salary. Bouguerra, Polacco and Al-Darwish mentioned laws that were established by the Emir of Qatar that protect labors rights. What grabbed my attention in these laws is that maids are not allowed to work more than eight hours a day, freedom of religious practices and having the Friday off.

In sociology, treatment based on nationally and race is a form of racism and different social classes. Social Mobility is a term that means "if you work hard you go one level up", but for these maids who are located in the working class are unlikely to go up even one level. Yet the middle class such as students and people who attend schools are more likely to move to the highest class only if they work hard. In Qatar, most people get treated based on their position in the society and what they do. Although families in Qatar tend to teach their children to respect the maids and the drivers, these kids tend to disrespect their maids and yell at them for silly reasons.

Maids should be respected as humans, and should be treated the same as we treat anyone else. If they do a mistake one should forgive because at the end of the day we are all humans.